Bruce and Ozzy

Now that I'm getting older I find that I have these flashes of long-past memories that remind me of events and experiences now nearly forgotten.

Just in case the ever-shrinking world happens to reach this person, I wanted to let an old Army roommate know about what happened after we parted ways.

Among others assigned to our barracks, I became friendly with a guy whose name I recall as Bruce Corsack or Korsak or something very close to that. Anyway, every single morning just after 5am or so Bruce would annoy the living hell out of me by blaring Ozzy Osbourne out of his tape player. I couldn't stand Ozzy and here I was subjected to endless barrages of his "music". To wake up to that every single day, without exception and clearly, with Bruce enjoying every minute of it, was hard to bear.

Well Bruce, I wanted you to know that, in the end, you won. Not long after we parted ways and I returned home I found myself at a Sam Goody's store looking for all of Ozzy's tapes. Today, I'm a pretty happy Ozzy fan and just finally introduced his tunes to my own son who thinks he's pretty cool.

If you're out there Bruce, I wanted to say thanks even if it is 25 years after the fact.

Enchanting Enchantment

We just got back from seeing Disney's latest movie, "Enchantment". It's quite an achievement. It's original, boasts a couple of Oscar-worthy songs and appeals to a wide audience.

The beginning of the movie offers up a fantastic animated sequence that's narrated by the ever-talented Julie Andrews. This early part of the story sets the tone for the rest of the film. The artwork is tremendous and the storyline let's you know that everything here is over-the-top.

It's funny but based on the previews of this movie, I expected a much different plot from the one we got and that's not a bad thing. It was a pleasant surprise.

There's an amazing song and dance sequence that takes place in the heart of New York that caught me entirely by surprise.

There are one or two places where the movie is a little on the long side but overall it's a classic Disney story that should continue to be seen in positive light for many years to come.

A Word About Game Audio

My background is in game development having owned the first (and largest at the time) game testing company for 13 years. On the personal side I've been a gamer in squads and clans going back to their birth.

On the audio side I've been involved from the very first days of PC audio. I currently work for a very high-end earphone company (Etymotic Research) and am responsible for their new gaming division called EDGE Acoustics. ER makes $300 earphones for people like U2, Coldplay, Dire Straits and many other music professionals. We're aiming to do the same for pro gamers (and non-pros who want to be the best they can be).

Many PC games have quality audio while others don't. A current example of a game that excels in this is Ubisoft's "GRAW 2". It has exceptional 3D sound. The spatial cues are better than in many other games with very small subtleties presented to hear the opponent.

When you think about audio in relation to gaming know a few things:

1) Most headphones/earphones were NOT designed for FPS gaming. They were designed for music. Music audio is not the same thing as game audio. Music headphone companies design their products to "enhance" the experience. That means what you're getting is an artificial sound. In games that means that the spatial cues that were presented by the developer are also artificially processed, and thus, changed.

2) This "enhancement" usually means HEAVY bass boost. Bass boost is a MAJOR enemy of FPS gamers. If you're a good player with bass-boosted headphones, you'd be significantly better without bass-boosted headphones. Bass boost muddies spatial cues heavily. Subtle sounds that could help you identify an approaching enemy get lost in the effect. Each company colors the product to fit the needs of the perceived market. Some color the highs, boost the bass X or Y amount, etc. All of this is bad for gaming but might be just fine for music. It's why some people prefer Sony over Sennheiser or any other comparisons. The different coloring goes a long way towards why these products are so different.

3) Isolation is a key factor. The more isolation you can get the more clearly you can hear. If you cup your hands over your ears you get a muffled sound as every outside resonance bounces around the cup. If you stick your fingers in your ears that goes away. You hear your heartbeat. That's isolation. GOOD earphones give you maximum isolation. For example, the BEST headphones on the planet give you 22dB of isolation. ER earphones provide 37-42dB of isolation and that's log scale so that's not double but 10x the isolation of headphones. Most headphones give you only 2-10dB of isolation. This is all about focus. The more you can focus, the better. Anyone that tells you that you can block out all sounds is lying. You have a bone structure so your body will convey outside sound. The key is to reduce it as much as possible.

4) Accuracy/Detail is king. Most products made for music are not accurate. This can be easily measured and most products on the market have accuracy scores well below 50%. The products I've used measure in the 80's and 90's.These are designed for a medium that isn't concerned about accuracy. They're sold to gamers because that's the predominant available technology. It's like using a butter knife as a screwdriver. It can work but it's not optimal.

Just so you know, ER is a research company. They don't do marketing in any traditional sense. They don't do commercials. I've been with them nearly 3 years and have yet to sell anything (the gaming earphones launch next month). I spent most of this time on a research study testing top gamers response times with all sorts of audio equipment.

The results were pretty obvious. The BETTER (fidelity) the equipment, the better your results. Speakers did the worst. Surround speakers did SLIGHTLY better (they sound great and fun but they're totally inaccurate). Earphones (ER, Shure, Ultimate Ears and soon, EDGE Acoustics) can give you a 30-50% performance improvement over headphones. It's mainly due to isolation but also, in the case of ER & EDGE, accurate response. We're not bass boosting so you hear what you're supposed to hear without it being "enhanced."

I encountered Etymotic as a customer years ago at a LAN event. I've been using one of their earphones for years without being associated with them professionally. It was clear to me that their products improved gaming but I wasn't sure why. The reason is that Etymotic's background is in the audiology, medical audio and hearing aid industries. In that world it's all about detail and accuracy. The music industry is entirely different. The emphasis there is on selling you what each company thinks you want to hear and not what's actually there to be heard.

I'm telling you all this not to sell you earphones. I'm telling you this so that you'll think about the facts the next time you replace your heaphones. Our products aren't even available yet.

Let me touch on perspective for a moment. I wrote the Official Sound Blaster Book series. I helped get AdLib and Creative Labs started in the sound industry. I have literally dozens of headphones in my collection all sent free to me by the manufacturers. I used to use $1,200 studio-level Sennheisers when I gamed. When they wore out I tried earphones and never looked back. In other words, having tried the various different products out there personally I found earphones provided the highest benefit for gaming.

Be wary of marketing hype. I posted this specific note because I see recommendations of headphones that are almost entirely hype. For example, any product listed as using active noise-canceling is suspect for a gamer. These processes remove elements of sound in an attempt to reduce outside noise. What are they removing? In a game you can't afford to lose localization data! Also, the result of this, as I said, gets you to about 20dB of isolation at best. You can do much better without all the "technology". Another one is surround sound headphones. This one is pure marketing. If you feel you hear surround with it, great. What you're hearing is an effect very much like turning on any processed effect in your stereo like "Hall" or "Arena". Your ears are STEREO. Surround sound works only because of distance. To place multiple drivers in your headphone and think your stereo ears are going to pick up on this is just not realistic. The same result can be had from any good, clean, accurate stereo headphone.

You also get what you pay for. I wonder with people who spend $400 on a video card, $100+ on a sound card, $90 on a mouse, $80 on a keyboard, etc., and then spend $30-$50 on a headset. EDGE earphones aren't cheap but neither are any of the headphones out there that are truly accurate. What you see debated most of the time are people arguing about the differences between low-end solutions. I also encounter the term, "best I've ever used" which, on the face of it, means nothing. How many have they used? I will get into debates with kids who have owned two or three pairs of crappy headphones telling me that their $30 surround-sound headphones are the best on the planet. Uh-huh. I cannot begin to tell you how many poor audio reviews I encounter. Most of them are clearly written by people who have only a cursory exposure to equipment. The best they can do is share a use-case review. They liked or disliked them "because" but to recommend them over other equipment types or levels they've never experienced is where I start to get annoyed.

Be informed. Go look up what went on with the DVD debate of DTS audio versus Dolby Digital. Fans of each camp fought heavily over each one being better but in the end, the majority of consumers who did blind testing preferred the sound of DTS. Recent studies have analyzed this and found that the ONLY difference between DTS and DD is that DTS provides the same audio slightly louder than DD and most consumers equate "louder" as "better". The same thing happens with video all the time. TV's in stores have their color settings set way over the top as people look at one set over the next and if the colors "pop" they perceive this as "quality". It rarely means that but that's how people think. People in audio equate booming bass and volume as quality and that's what companies then cater to.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to drop me a note asking about it.

New Home

Well, I've finally done it. After years of resisting it, I just got my own hosted website. I'm still not sure what I'll do with it but for now it'll just be a launching pad for this blog (which you can get directly at http://blog.pcserenity.com) and maybe my family tree.

I wouldn't have bothered if Blogger could handle hosting properly but it has issues.

Anyway, off to go enjoy part of the long holiday weekend.

It's Treason After All

Former chief liar or White House press secretary Scott McClellan is finally writing a book and in it he specifically points to George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Andrew Card as all having full knowledge that they were sending McClellan out to, as he states it, unknowingly lie about the involvement of Rove and "Scooter" Libby in the Valerie Plame scandal.

McClellan is a guy that supported this administration's bull so often and so passionately that when he says these guys knew what was up, you know there's more than a grain of truth to it.

I'm tired of the excuses that have been made for this administration. It's been one fiasco after another. In all the years they've been in office the only bright spot I can point to is Bush's extension of daylight savings as a positive. Nice job. We have a President who lied us into war, attacked the Constitution, committed treason by exposing a CIA operative, botched a couple national emergencies, drove housing down and oil up and we're supposed to think of Bill Clinton's blow job as a bigger stain on the nation? His was just a stain on a dress. No more, no less. It's a pity we have a completely useless do nothing Congress.

Beowulf

Just got back from seeing "Beowulf" in digital 3D. The first thing I noticed was that the digital presentation was much better than I anticipated. Everything was pretty flawless though the edges of the screen lacked a bit for brightness. I've had concerns about resolution (jaggies) and other issues but they were all pretty much put to rest with this experience.

As for the movie specifically, this was a compelling re-imagining of the classic story. Most of the reviews have focused entirely on the technology and suggesting that the story is rather lacking. I think that's a bit overstating it. While this new twist on the tale isn't destined for an Oscar, it's also fairly entertaining in its own right.

Obviously I spent much of the movie marveling at the technology but not so much that I wasn't kept interested by the story.

As far as the technology, this movie presents it wonderfully. It dazzled me time and again and made me think of all of the potential this will present to future film making. That said, it certainly wasn't without its issues. Some scenes looked photo-realistic while others looked, quite simply, wrong. Character portrayals were hit-and-miss. Most of the body now seems perfectly animated while the eyes and movements of the hands still remind you that what you're seeing isn't real. Robin Wright Penn's character never once looked real to me. Her eyes were continually unrealistic. Things really looked basic whenever anyone rode a horse and snow went from looking flawless to looking like a bad 1960's cartoon rendition.

Even with those concerns I'm glad I saw this. It was certainly entertaining and technically thought provoking. There was nothing to complain about regarding the 3D except for the low quality of the "free" glasses. If this catches on I'll have to buy a more permanent personal pair somewhere. I can't wait to see what the future holds.

Time for War

I've decided Congress should go ahead and declare war. They should declare it because this enemy strikes fear into the hearts of every American. It's an insidious enemy that strikes without warning, without fear, without any heart or morality. It doesn't strike with the backing of a government. It destroys families and bankrupts many it doesn't quite eradicate.

This enemy is illness. We need to declare War on Illness. The Right won't do anything, it seems, unless we declare war on it so this seems to be the only way to get the point across to them.

Oh, but this is a socialist nightmare you say? How can you say that with a straight face while you sit back and tell me you support the War on Terrorism?.

Explain to me how these two things, that seem so obviously different, really are. In the war on terror you have our country spending countless dollars to fight an enemy because it attacked us and might again. Illness will attack nearly all of us, repeatedly and continually. Illness is natural? Well, viewing our history, so is both war and terrorism. It's been going on for nearly as long as illness.

How can you support one socialist ideal but put down the other as communist or socialist heresy? Our country raising troops to fight a war in our name is socialist. Let's face it, while the stakes are small we sneak by with a so-called "volunteer army". I don't think I'd have a hard time rounding up Iraq vets who wouldn't describe their experiences as something they feel they volunteered for. When the stakes are large we institute a draft forcing citizens to fight other people in an entirely socialist endeavor. We stamp it, just as the communists before us did, as a righteous cause.

I'm at a loss to explain how some people cannot see this action as anything but socialistic in nature. If I were to turn this around on them I'd suggest that if terrorism scares them as much as they claim it does then perhaps they should get up off their asses and go do something about it. The terrorists have at least done that much. How dare these people take my money to alleviate their fear and then turn around and tell us that we can't spend far less money to fight a war that hurts everyone and causes more fatalities than any war can achieve.

As far as corruption goes it seems obvious that universal health care would have its share. How is this any different than what goes on with our socialized military? Blackwater, Halliburton, no-bid contracts, military base income for Senators, etc.

You want a War on Terror? Fine. You can have it but I want it balanced by a War on Illness.

Where's the Competition Factor?

Digital media is supposed to be better is it not? One of my biggest gripes about it is that the industry, across the board, refuses to acknowledge this fact and keeps trying to apply old methods to the new media.

What I mean by this is that I'm tired of being told that songs, books, games, movies I buy online are not available to me any longer should they go missing (like a hard drive crash). Their excuse for this is that you don't get a new copy of a book or a movie if you lose it. Give me a BREAK. There is little cost for reading the database, seeing I bought that product before and letting me get it again. Fine, charge me a SMALL fee for a duplicate but make it possible.

I'm tired of paying as much (or more) for digital content only to have it be less functional, less flexible, less enjoyable and less reliable. It all just reeks of gouging.

Another example of this is EA and games. You pay FULL price to download a game of theirs and they only allow access to it for six months.

It seems to me that competition would drive someone to make this a non-issue. The company in question has the content on hand and they know I bought it. What's the big deal here?

No Country For Old Men (or Movie Fans)

We saw "No Country For Old Men" tonight while it's in limited release. The movie showed to a packed house.

It's from the Coen brothers and stars Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and an unknown actor playing the main role of the psychopath. There's also some great character work from Woody Harrelson and Tess Harper. The movie was quite an experience. The acting is Oscar-worthy from start to finish. For most of the movie the audience was sitting on the very edges of their seats. Tension filled the theater. Every scene brought shrieks or much-needed tension-breaking laughter.

And then, suddenly, about 80% of the way through the movie, it takes a left turn down an alley we never saw coming for no comprehensible reason and never comes back. The audience let out an audible groan coming from throughout the theater. Then the movie continued towards yet another ending and when it finally concluded everyone just sighed. You could hear people saying, "What? That's it? Are they kidding?"

The movie had everyone. We were all taken with it and ready for the story the movie presented to us at that point. Then it's as if the Coen brothers said, "Oh, that's not the story we're telling. Here's the actual story..." What they took us to no one wanted or cared about.

Nice job guys.

The reviewers keep comparing this to another of the Coen's films, the masterpiece "Fargo". They seem to think this is of similar caliber. It's not. Fargo is a complete movie. This one leaves you feeling short-changed. It's yet another example of reviewers, especially those who are students of film, being blown away by the tremendous performances to be had here. For the rest of us, it's about the complete story. Most people aren't happy with spending two hours getting a wonderfully detailed story only to be handed an ending that seems to have come only as a result of the project running out of funding.

Call of Duty 4 Arcade Game

The new PC version of Call of Duty 4 arrived today. The single player version of these games has always been exceptional while I have never liked the multiplayer version.

The current game is no exception. It's complete chaos. From the moment you land in a server it's a mess. You take 5 steps and teams of people are firing at you from all angles. There's no chance to really work a sector. The sound is way overdone and so chaotic that you can't focus on anything and have a really hard time hearing your own squad mates. Worse, you can't turn off the annoying music and it comes up all the time.

Then there's the whole console-like achievements pieces. You can't just be a sniper. You have to earn it. You can't have a scope. You have to earn it. You can't have camouflage. You have to earn it. In other words, new players are at a major disadvantage. So many things are turned off that have to be found and I just don't care.

The graphics are exceptional but ultimately not very beneficial as you really don't get a chance to utilize any part of them for more than a few seconds.

In most play modes your enemies are pointed out to you. Maps are so small that you can't help but to run into 3, 4 and 5 or more other players time and again.

If someone is lucky to trigger the ability to call in an air strike then you're going to be taken out from above.

I'm going to give this some more time to change my mind but so far the game is everything I expected and none of it was good.

More Comcast Troubles

Two weeks ago I noticed that the graphic I have on this blog wasn't loading. It's stored on my personal web space with Comcast while the blog is hosted fully on Blogger.com. I had just gotten a note that Comcast had upgraded their personal web service from 25 MB to something like 2 GB so I assumed this was a temporary problem and that they'd fix it soon enough. Everything else worked just fine.

Over the next two weeks I noticed it still wasn't fixed. Last Wednesday I finally decided to start digging. I launched FlashFXP to FTP into my web space account. It wouldn't let me connect. Bad password. The problem is that it's the same password that you use for e-mail and that was working.

I called Comcast to let them know what was up. That was apparently my first mistake. Five minutes after I hung up all Internet service went down for 30 minutes and when it came back up the only thing working was browsing. I couldn't load my website. I couldn't log into my website. I couldn't get e-mail. I later found out that all mail to that account was being bounced. Friends and family started calling asking if everything was okay and a couple asked if I needed money assuming I didn't pay the bill for some reason. Very embarrassing.

I called again on Thursday to be told it takes 24-48 hours to resolve these problems. I called back in on Friday and was told they only officially opened a ticket on Thursday so I still had to wait until Saturday but that there's no way this would still be a problem over the weekend.

On Saturday I called to be told that it still wasn't fixed but that support had no access to "Tier 2" and could only e-mail them to convey my concerns. On Sunday I got the same story. I called Sunday night and reached a helpful fellow who said that he pushed my help ticket into a new "Callback" category.

Come Monday when I called I was told that the nice guy from support made a mistake and created a new ticket that requested a call back but that now my 24-48 hour window had been restarted.

Just a few minutes ago someone from Comcast called to tell me they'd fixed everything. Before he hung up I asked him to hold on and tried my website. It didn't load. I tried my FTP. No access. I loaded e-mail. No go. In other words, here someone is calling me and none of my issues are resolved.

He then put me on hold while he worked on it but then the call dropped.

Verizon FiOS is looking better every day and the contractors for Verizon are digging up our neighborhood as I type this laying fiber for their service.

A Doll and a doll.

First up we saw "Lars and the Real Girl" and it was a great surprise. It's a dark comedy that really is more drama that it is comedy. Ryan Gosling is exceptional as its title character.

This is a movie that really makes you wish you lived in a community the likes of the one presented here. It'd be right at home in any Normal Rockwell painting.

We were even able to bring my 12 year-old along and he enjoyed it as well. What's amazing is that there's absolutely no adult shenanigans in a movie that co-stars a sex doll. The doll is very much a major character in the movie and what impressed me most of all was how the writers made it so believable that all of the plot points could happen. That this doll could help not only Lars but also just about everyone in this tight-knit community is just precious. The car in which everyone goes through their various parts is exceptional. No one is out-of-focus here.

I can't wait to recommend this one to family and friends. There really isn't much to dislike here. It might be a bit dark for some but it's still impressive even if you're not a big fan of dark.

Next up we caught Steve Carell's new movie, "Dan and the Real G..... Oh, wait, it's called "Dan in Real Life."

This is a movie I've been worried about for some time. We saw the previews for it ages ago and then the movie seemed to miss one release date after another. I also happened to catch a totally different preview with my wife than the one I'd seen a dozen times with my friend. The two made the movie appear to be about entirely different stories.

This movie is not terrible. It's just not noteworthy. The previews are pretty much exhausted in the first 15 minutes and a couple aren't even in the final movie. A couple roles are poorly cast. Most notably the roles of the ill-fated brother and pig-face. They just didn't work for me. On a plus side, Diane Wiest needs to get into more movies. After this one many of you will wish she was your mother. Carell does a decent job but it's almost a snore from his perspective. The real shining light of the movie is Juliette Binoche. This woman gets better looking to me the older she gets. She's 43 and looks great. However, due to the poor casting of the brother, she looks totally wrong for him and you spend most of the movie just wishing they'd cut to the chase and kill off the brother in some quick plot point accident.

In the end you have a feel-good movie that doesn't make you feel all that good. It's a comedy with few real laughs and a drama that doesn't have much drama. I don't want my money back but please don't give us Part 2.

The Most Basic Failure

I don't quite recall where I first saw this discussed but it resonated with me pretty heavily.

The President of the United States takes the following oath of office:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The one thing that is absolutely clear in that statement is that the key role of the President is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. It's pretty simple and direct. Has President George W. Bush succeeded in this oath? I don't believe anyone can say that he has and continue to have a leg to stand on. This administration has, if anything, outright attacked the Constitution and done little to move to preserve it. Instead they've viewed it as a major stumbling block to where they want to take the nation. The Constitution has been lost to a large degree over the last seven years and this issue needs to be corrected.

This basic tenet needs to be passed on so that everyone remembers what the job of the President is. President Bush has failed miserably at the one specific thing he took an oath to do. It is this reality that he needs to be measured against with respect to legacy and it is here that history will view his administration as a complete failure.